


Black Sea

by claryfrary



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: (i have no idea how to write children; i'm sorry), ANGSTY TEEN ALEKS, F/M, Oh my dear Alina, Oops?, That's funny, anYWAY YOUR FAVOURITE MONARCHS ARE BACK AND BICKERING, did i say angsty teen aleks???, did you think a young Aleksander would actually behave like a child?, i meant lovestruck teen aleks, i'd say you got yourself into this mess but..., major character death??, teen Aleks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-03-20 14:45:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13719921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claryfrary/pseuds/claryfrary
Summary: A friendship forged in the light of church windows is only the beginning of their immortality.An endless battle  between sun and shadows is how it ends.What happens in between is neither here nor there.





	1. formative

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so when I said I was working on something else, this was not it.
> 
> But here we are. 
> 
> (Just for reference, this begins around the time The Darkling was born in canon, so no one particularly likes Grisha.)
> 
> Oh, and Nebesnyy means Heavenly, and Solntse means Sun.

* * *

 She was refusing to look at him. This was not new, he was used to the prolonged silences and indiscernible facial expressions. But she knew that not meeting his eyes bothered him the most. She was _valiant_ to do that. Anyone else, and he might have sliced them clean in half with the Cut. Alina Starkov, however, had perhaps earned this right somewhere along the forgotten centuries.

That, and the Darkling knew she would never forgive him if he tried it.

* * *

**i.**

Aleksander never lost count, and this was the seventh village this year.

It was on the outskirts of Ravka, but not so much that they were risking being massacred by Fjerdans. Two mills were the pillars of this small church town - tall stone towers that formed an arch. _Dva Stolba_ was the name murmured by locals as they worked.

They settled into a groove, familiar and worn, but different all the same. His _madraya_ called him by a different name than she’d given him, and he was vigilant in his new identity. As if he’d been Erik or Viktor or Alexei his whole life.

His mother would have preferred to keep him near and teach him herself, but there were classes taught at the church, and all the mothers and fathers delivered their sons and daughters on the doorstep before heading for the fields and the mills. _Blend_ , his madraya always said.

So Aleksander, too, attended the classes.

\---

The children whispered to each other and never to the pale boy with no lunch and too-big eyes.  

He was used to this. His mother had told him as much would occur many times before. It did not quite lessen the sting.

But for how strange the other children thought he might be, they thought the small brown-haired girl was just as strange or stranger, sitting in the corner between two windows alone. He noticed this, and he did not approach her; Aleksander watched as she cupped the sunlight that poured into her palms like she could truly hold on to it, like the golden light was heavenly, her favourite thing in the world.

He did not know what to make of the strange girl.

\---

The teacher dismissed them for a small lunch break, and the children again broke off into groups. Aleksander on his own, and the girl heading for her corner.

He followed, sinking against the wall opposite her, not close, but his long gangly legs made it seem so. His legs kept knocking into her knees and feet. His cheeks turned pink with embarrassment, and she acted for all the world like the sunlight bathing her made her not notice his ministrations.

There were no words exchanged, only Aleksander’s back pressed against the stone wall, the girl’s small face tilted up to meet the sun.

Day after day until he said, “you like the sun.”

“You must too,” she replied, blinking at him.

He could not deny he liked it far better than the blackness, the sightlessness of nights spent huddled into tents with his madraya. It was perhaps here that Aleksander inadvertently learned how he could use silence as a tool, because when he did not respond, lost in his thoughts, the girl continued.

\---

“Can I tell you a secret?” The girl asked him one afternoon, hiding in the woods. He had come to know her as Alina Starkov, and when he’d asked why it wasn’t Starkov _a,_ she’d asked him why his was Morozova and not _Morozov_.

“Of course,” he replied, affronted and with his legs crossed awkwardly beneath him, because as he had told his friend the day or two before, he was a _superb secret keeper, just ask my_ _madraya_ (she could not; his madraya was not keen on her son having friends). Alina had stared at him, confused, only come to tell him she hadn’t the slightest idea what superb meant.

She was nervous and perhaps scared, he noticed. He watched Alina chew at her bottom lip, and her eyes dart around the empty wood as though someone were going to catch her. But this fear did not stop her from holding her hands out to him. Aleksander reached for them, unsure, but she shook her head. He withdrew, knotting his hands in his lap, and her hands began to glow.  

It was that favourite light of hers, the gold of sunshine through a church window. A word from a story his mother had told him once before came to mind. _Sankta_.

She did not stop him this time as his hands closed hesitantly around her wrists and the small sun in her palms turned the wood into a sanctuary.

\---

The village folk noticed the light in the wood. They were sure a Saint had come to save them or a Grisha to murder them. They did not suspect a child, let alone the orphan girl and the strange boy.

And they did not notice when the strange boy and his beautiful madraya left, the orphan girl with them.

**ii.**

It was a wonderful thing to have someone your own age around, Aleksander discovered. Even when settling in a new village, settling into a new name, even as things changed and they changed - his legs and arms growing longer still, his face losing some of the chubbiness, Alina’s hair growing longer and her body slightly taller, Baghra’s face withering slowly like an apple - they were still the same more or less. It reminded him of the feeling of sanctuary he’d found in the woods with her, surrounded by blinding, scorching sunlight.

But lately they’d been more shrouded by more darkness than sun, the air cold and the skies gray with the promise of snow. Soon, hopefully, they would be settling in a new village for a while.

For now though, Baghra had left them buried deep in the woods while she went in search of said village.

Aleksander stuck his hand out in front of him, arm straight and sturdy, aiming for a tree so tall he could not see the top, eyes narrowing in concentration. He brushed back the hair in his eyes with impatience. He didn’t have the _time_ for small inconveniences. He had no idea how long it would take before his _madraya_ returned, and he wanted to be able to wield the Cut by the time she did.

He could not see her, but he heard the crinkle in her brow when she spoke. “What are you doing?”

“The Cut.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re doing much of anything, Aleks.” He scowled and she began again, “what is the Cut?”

He lowered his arm slowly and moved to sit opposite her, crossing his legs underneath him. “It is your power concentrated, and you must be incredibly powerful to wield it.”

“And you can do it?”

“I will be able to, in time.”

“So will I,” she tipped her chin up, and the look in her eyes made him believe she would be capable of just about anything.

\---

This village was somewhere between Tsibeya and the Petrazoi, and cold air bit at exposed skin like knives, even through the walls of a rickety tent that was half fabric half broken pieces of lumber. Aleksander never quite caught the name of it, and he knew better than to ask.

Baghra marketed them as a family, Madraya, brother and sister, their father dead from a Fjerdan raid that had never occurred. Not to them, at least. Alina and Aleksander dutifully played the parts of two painfully shy siblings, preferring the company of each other than the company of the village children.

Most days Aleksander found himself in the woods with Alina, both dutifully trying to master the Cut that would not manifest in their small hands until one (most often Alina) decided enough was enough and sent tendrils of power over to the other. And they would play this way, with their power, and Aleksander did not notice - would not notice until he was much older - the poeticness of light and dark, swirling together like that, intertwining, brushing hands and arms and cheeks.

\---   

They were careful with their powers, with when they summoned and when they did not. Baghra had instilled this much sense into the duo. But still, the boy Baghra had borne and raised - he was losing his sense, his sharpness, that watchfulness that was key to surviving in a world so cruel to Grisha. And it was because of the girl.

They were perfectly unmemorable, Baghra knew this. She had made it so. It made it easier to leave in a hurry, without any explanation. So when the first signs of thaw presented themselves in the form of dripping, melting icicles and milder weather, Baghra packed up this life.

**iii.**

“You would make a terrible tracker,” Aleksander retorted.

Alina looked indignant but crossed her arms over her chest as they walked. He did not know where they were headed, but would have easily been able to tell they were going south should he have been paying any attention to his surroundings. “And you would do better?”

“I am more...detail-oriented, Alina _.”_ He had first called her _Nebesnyy_ because she reminded him of a Saint when she held the sun in her hands and his madraya had scolded him; one shouldn’t say such foolish things, and not about girls who could only do something so trivial as have the sun at her beck and call.

So he called her _Solntse_ instead. But only in the privacy of his thoughts, and - years later - in the privacy of his personal chambers.

\---

He did not know what to say, face to face with _Solntse_ in a cot in an inn that were both too small - he wondered how his mother fit on her cot at all if he was having so much difficulty - so he took in her face, eyes a richer brown than her hair with dark circles under them, the line of her nose, the absence of that glow he remembered seeing when she summoned, consuming all of it.  

She seemed to be doing the same.

\---

His Madraya woke them early the next morning. The sky was gray, but the air was humid, clinging to skin and choking lungs.  

This, Aleksander and Alina would soon discover, was to be the last they were to see of each other.

Baghra led them through woods and down roads smoothed by years of feet passing over them. It was a while until they came upon what appeared to be a Duke’s property, tucked near the edge of an already miniscule southern town. The mansion was a sprawling monster, overtaking the yellowing grass and only stopping because of a centuries’ old tree, tall and wide. Alina’s hand sought his own - an action he had become very familiar with. 

He tried his very best not to return her grip of death.

Baghra was staring straight ahead as she said, “go on.” Later, he would wonder if she’d done it because she could not so easily send off a girl she had learned to care for.

Alina looked up at Baghra, eyes wide and lips parting like she wanted to speak.

Aleksander looked at her. “Alina,” he said. His voice was sharp and strangely loud to his ears. Perhaps it was the eerie quiet that encompassed the property.  

Her anxious gaze darted to him, but before he could continue - not that he quite knew what to say in face to that expression - his mother did: “Knock on the door, girl.”

She squeezed his hand tighter. “Then what?”

“Go inside.”

Aleksander nodded encouragingly to her. “We will be here, Alina.”

His madraya did not affirm the statement.

This was the first of many lies he would tell Alina Starkov.

But not the last.

Certainly,

not the last.


	2. morozova's amplifier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again:  
> Solntse = Sun  
> Nebesnyy = Heavenly
> 
> Enjoy!!

* * *

 

"What will you do now, _Sankta_?" 

Now, she looked at him. This bothered him, perhaps, nearly just as much as her refusal to look at him - because she was not seeing The Darkling, a force to be reckoned with, a cruelty whose ruthlessness and ambition knew no bounds, _a living amplifier_ ; she was seeing someone else entirely.

The Sun Summoner met his hard stare, cocked her head and her lips curved in the imitation of a smile. "I will burn your little kingdom to the ground and watch you rage in the ashes."   

* * *

  **iii.**

It was almost impressive what seven years could do for a vacation town.

But Aleksander had seen better, nicer...cleaner.

Duke Keramsov’s estate had truly gone to ruin: peeling paint and broken shutters, grass nearly to up to his knees and children running around the trunk of that tree he remembered. The other estates he had since passed were no better off.

Against his better judgement and seemingly his volition, a half faded, fuzzy memory flashed through his mind; a girl, meek and mousy, walking tentatively up those steps - his mother, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and all but dragging him behind her when the door swung open and the girl jumped back -  

This time it was he who raised his hand to knock.

He was not meek or tenative about it.

The door swung open with a quickness that would almost suggest the crab-apple woman now filling the door frame had been waiting. “Who are you?” She snapped.

“I am looking for Alina Starkov.”

The woman seemed to sour further. “She is with the other children.”

Aleksander peered leisurely at the tree. No, he did not see a girl his age running around it with the _other children_. “Is that so.”

“Yes,” and the door swung shut.

\---

He wandered around the Duke’s property. He did not like wandering, as it implied he did not know where he was going. He would have much preferred having at least a rough idea of what he was walking into.

Eventually he found his way into an alcove of sorts, almost invisible behind a line of trees near the edge of the property. In the alcove was a pond - recently disturbed judging by the ripples on the surface and the shirtless boys dripping water - and what Aleksander assumed the woman had meant by “other children”.

Laying in the grass instead of laughing with the rest of them was a girl. She bathed in the sun, eyes closed and chin uptilted, arms stretched out. There were at least three other girls with brown hair, but he knew his _Solntse_ when he saw her. She still had that jagged scar running across her right palm. He could almost recall the feel of it pressed against his own hand as she squeezed.

He sat down beside her in the grass, intentionally and effectively blocking the sun.

Her eyes popped open, and she blinked. Once, twice, another time - against the harshness of the sun in her eyes or in surprise, he could not tell. Then she sat up slowly, hair falling against her back and shoulders. He took her in, the line of her nose, the sharpness of her cheekbones, the eyes and the dark half moons under them. He wondered when the last time she’d summoned was.

“You like the sun,” his eyes did not leave hers.

She combed a piece of brown hair back behind her left ear. “You must too,” she replied.

“Alina!” One of the boys called, and Alina’s attention was suddenly, completely, wholly, diverted. There was a strange feeling that burst through him, and he couldn’t have put a name to it if he tried. Frustration at that, at the boy, replaced the feeling and his teeth ground down into each other. Some small part of his mind thought to placate his expression, but it was just that - some small part.

Aleksander's expression remained the same as he approached and Alina’s lips pulled back in a truly, unquestionably radiant smile. Another small part of him wondered if the sun was jealous of a smile so bright.

But then, Alina was part sun, was she not?

The boy did not notice him, eyes only for Alina as he held out two hands to pull her up. She took them, and let him pull her to her feet, and Aleksander watched, wishing for that cold feeling of detachment to overcome him, as it sometimes did, and close him off to the things he was feeling. But this was no life or death situation, and the numbness did not come.

Alina was pushing hair out of his face, squealing suddenly when he began to shake his head and water droplets flew from him and onto her. She moved backwards, and she must have forgotten Aleksander in her _distraction_ because she tripped over his outstretched legs. Her arms flailed behind her, trying to break her fall, but the fall never came - he was up and steadying her before the boy had even had half a mind to try.

Her eyes flitted up to him, and he swore he could feel the beating of her heart against him as he held her. And just as quickly the boy held her attention and she pulled out of Aleksander’s hands.

“Mal,” she began. “This is my friend -”

“Gavril,” Aleksander interrupted. He did not hold out his hand for Mal to shake.

Mal’s eyes went wide, glancing down at Alina. “You’ve never mentioned him before.”

It was Aleksander to whom she looked when responded, holding his eyes as if making a point. “There was nothing worth mentioning.”

**iv.**

Utensils and glasses clinked against the table.

Aleksander cut into a piece of meat - he did not know what kind, and had learned it was far more appetizing to not ask - mulling over his thoughts. He’d always liked to think he was honest, but that was laughably far from the truth. He was a liar, and he had lied to Alina Starkov. It did not matter that it had been seven years ago, or that he had not known he was lying when the words came out.

Because neither of those things mattered to Alina.

When she looked at him - he saw it written plainly on that divine face - she saw someone who had left her at an orphanage, who had lied to her face. He could not blame her for the resentment.

And here he was at her dinner table, across from her, unnerving her with his very presence. She didn’t know what he wanted, why he was her - could not guess or would not, he wasn’t sure.

Her foot accidentally brushed his leg under the table and she nearly jumped in her seat, eyes darting up from her plate to him...only to find he was already watching her. The caution, the anger, the fear, the longing he saw there made his heart hurl itself harder against his chest.

He only smirked into his glass of water.

**v.**

“Why are you here, Aleksander?”

His back was to her, staring out the window that faced the grassy front. He turned slowly, leisurely. It was a practiced move, one he had to remind himself to make. “I could have been naked, you know.”

She’d been the one to unlock his door and march in, but she was blushing like he’d walked in on _her_. “And I wouldn’t have cared.” She was lying - his lips quirked but he didn’t say a word.

After a moment of silence, she shifted her weight. “I asked you a question.”

“I heard.”

She looked equally annoyed and exasperated. “Are you going to answer it?”

“I could,” he nodded, “but I don’t think you’ll like the answer.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” _I know you better than you think, better than anyone,_ Solntse _. You love the sun, you hate herring, you’re stubborn and -_

And perhaps he did not know so much as he thought.

He deflected. “The lovely housekeeper is letting me stay the night.” He opened his hands, holding them up and showing his palms. “That’s why I’m here.”

Alina looked like she was trying not to roll her eyes. He tried not to let his lips quirk. “Ana Kuya is letting you stay the night?” She asked in disbelief. “How much did you pay her?”

“She only agreed to let me stay if I took you off her hands.”

The disbelief, this time, was not only in her tone; her mouth fell open and her eyebrows rose high on her forehead. Then came the anger.

“And when were you going to tell me? Or _were_ you going to tell me?” A pause in which she bit at her lower lip, shaking her head just a little. “Were you planning on dragging me off in the night?”

He did not fight the smirk this time. “If you’d like.”

\---

“Mal is coming with me.” It wasn’t an unexpected request, if he had been paying any attention at all. Really, he should have seen it coming. Should have been prepared. But she caught him off guard.

It felt like the mental equivalent to being startled off your chair.

She must have seen the look on his face, but all she did was smile mockingly, wryly, and walk back out of his room.

\---

By that afternoon there were two less children occupying Keramzin, and two more following Aleksander down a dirt road.

“So,” the boy said, wariness colouring his voice. “How do you know Alina?”

Alina’s eyes flashed Aleksander a sharp warning. “It doesn’t ma -”

“We met when were young.”

“Us too. I never actually talked to her until she showed up at Keramzin, though.” Mal smiled as though this were an accomplishment rather than a fond memory. Then, “Where are you taking us?”

“To our deaths,” Alina uttered under her breath.

Aleksander chose to ignore the comment. “To hunt a mythical creature.”

The boy laughed, tipping his head back - laughed, like he thought Aleksander was joking.

\---

The three of them had walked steadily until it was too dark to see even their feet - which, Aleksander could concede, had not been the best idea.

Because, now, they were struggling to find firewood.

Aleksander looked hard at Alina. He opened his mouth to ask why did she not just -

“No,” she replied before he had managed to get out even the first syllable.

“Don’t be -”

Alina’s eyes hardened. “I’m not.”

“Have you always been this difficult?” He almost laughed. Cocked his head. “Or is this a new development?”   

She crossed her arms over her chest, tipped her chin up almost imperceptibly. Then, after a few beats of silence where neither of the two did anything but regard the other, she stood up. Brushed off her pants. “I’m going to help Mal find some wood.”

It was an excuse to get away from him, this much was clear. But he wondered why she had not been helping her beloved in the first place, and why she had been sitting here. With him.

\---

In the morning, Mal had managed to trap two rabbits. He, grudgingly, asked Aleksander for help skinning one of them because “I’d rather Mr. Doom and Gloom cut himself than you, Alina.”

That comment had rather amused Aleksander.

Now, the rabbits were skinless and all that was left was to cut and dry the meat, he supposed; he stared at the carcass for a moment, half lost in thought, half contemplating which was the best way to begin.

“What, don’t tell me you’ve never done this before?” Mal mocked, but the look on his face told Aleksander the idea made him feel superior.

“I’ve done it plenty. But I need a knife to do it,” Aleksander replied dryly. Mal had taken the knife Aleksander had previously used to clean the blood and fur off of it.

Irritation flashed in Mal’s eyes but he told Aleksander to hang on and produced the second knife out of his worn leather boot. Their hands brushed as Aleksander took the knife and he expected to feel that thrumming pulse of power beneath the boy’s skin - the kind he felt whenever he and Alina touched - because surely, surely he was like them. But -

he wasn’t.

So Alina had not spent her years without him stag. So she had not waited for him like some part of him wanted. _So what_. He just never figured, could not wrap his head around the fact, that Alina would be with someone so...ordinary. So plain. So _beneath her_.

This was the girl _who could_ _hold the sun in her hands_ \- she deserved the world and more, and this boy, this _otkazat'sya_ could not - would never be able to - give her that.     

But this was fine. There were ways around problems.

There were ways around _otkazat'sya_ boys.

**vi.**

Aleksander lounged by the fire, flames casting him in a much warmer light than anything or anyone ever would. The heat was almost unbearable on his aching feet, stretched out towards the flickering embers. He could hear twigs cracking, breaking, hear leaves crunching and Alina’s soft yet sharp giggle echoing through the woods. He could hear her saying that boy’s name; _Mal Mal Mal Mal_.

He could hear _him_ groan.

It was almost funny -  no one looked for kindling in the dark for _this long_.

The fire was low by the time the two of them stumbled out of the forest, flushed and with Alina’s shirt askew.

Aleksander regarded them evenly, one side of his mouth tipped up almost imperceptibly. “Are the woods of out of wood?”

\---

Hungry seemed too mild a word to describe the feeling that gnawed at Aleksander’s stomach. He could tell by the pained expressions on his companion’s faces that they felt something similar.  

“Why don’t we just stop in a village?” The boy had complained a day or so prior. He’d been incapable of trapping anything lately, so this was partly his fault. Naturally.

Alina’s eyes had softened even as she arched a brow at Mal. “Because you see a village...where?” But she had glanced to Aleksander, and there had been more words spoken between them in that moment of silent communication than they usually ever uttered to each other aloud.

They shared the same look now, as Mal asked “Why can’t we stop in this village?” gesturing to the buildings so far in the distance they were mere specs. Spots of dirt on the bleak, gray horizon.

 _Because if they have even an inkling of what me and Alina are they will burn us alive and then the both of us will have to watch her die and not be able to do a single thing to stop it_.

But Alina flitted her eyes back to Mal, and whatever plead she saw in him, must have made her feel guilty enough to disregard the threat that this would pose to both of them.

When she met Aleksander’s eyes again, he could hear her voice in his mind. _You don’t have to do this_.

He wondered if she could hear his. _I haven’t turned away yet. I never will_.

\---

The village was like many Alina and Aleksander had seen before.

But this time there was no identity to sink into, no Baghra, no church corners to huddle into. No wood to escape into; the baren village was surrounded by a landscape just as barren. Mal glanced behind himself and smiled at Alina, and Aleksander supposed their hands were supposed to be linked together, but it looked more like the tracker was dragging her than anything.

Alina’s returning smile was more unintentionally bared teeth and nervousness than anything remotely pleasant.

“Did either of you bring any money?” The thought had just occurred to Aleksander and it seemed a particularly important thing.

“I-I...I did,” Alina stumbled over the words, and Aleksander did not notice the way he softened at her uncertainty, her fear.

“Perfect,” Mal smiled again.

There were few street vendors, even less merchants haggling with the few passerby there was. There could not have been a worse village to be inconspicuous in.

The tracker glanced around and let Alina’s hand fall back to her side. It was decided that the tracker would go and find whatever food there was to be had that could be saved and shared for the rest of their journey, and Alina and Aleksander would wait on a log seemingly carved into more or less the shape of a bench.

They sat in silence. Silence that included Alina tapping her fingers against the wood and bouncing her leg. It was a repetitive rhythm that Aleksander found no comfort in; he laid a hand over her thigh to cease the movement.

He had already been watching her, and when she turned her face up to look at him, colour bloomed across her cheeks, up to the tips of her ears. Perhaps it was the hand on her thigh that he had yet to remove, or the fact that their faces were very,

very

close together.

His chest did a strange thing then - a feeling almost like his heart had skipped a beat and started again.

In an intentionally slow move, he pulled his hand back to himself, stretched out his long legs in front of himself, and cocked his head as his gaze wandered to the vendor Mal was haggling with. Well - haggling was a generous word for what the tracker was really doing.

Alina’s eyes wandered over, too - and then away as she pretended not see her lover flirting with and mooning over the blonde girl behind the makeshift table, accidentally brushing against her as leaned on the counter.

The girl laughed with a hand covering her mouth.

**vii.**

The three of them had made good distance in what had remained of the daylight after their break in the village. Good enough distance that they were now in the northern regions of Ravka - just into the Petrazoi. None of them had dressed appropriately, and Alina’s funds had run dry feeding them, but they weren’t quite into the snow. They would be okay for tonight...at least he hoped.

The air was cold, vicious almost, but if the huddled together to sleep it would not be so bad - something both he and Alina had learned as children.

Now, the tracker snored, and Alina lay facing Aleksander, both silent. He recalled easily nights spent crushed in a too-small cot next to Alina, her small body curled into a ball, his lanky limbs spilling over the edges, all around her. Recalled the safety and surety of having her next to him. It was a different feeling of security than the one his _madraya_ had offered. But Aleksander had left his mother in Balakirev. It was just him and Alina now.

Aleksander found himself sinking back into old habits as he traced her features with his gaze. Her hair was brittle and her face had lost that child-like roundness as had his, perhaps from malnourishment and perhaps not, but she had not lost those impossibly sharp cheekbones. He resisted the impulse to reach out and feel them against his hands. She would not appreciate the gesture. But he wondered -

She reached for him in the darkness, brushing his leg and hip until she found his hand, knotting her fingers through his and squeezing tight enough he could feel the line of her scar, tight enough he could feel the power thrumming beneath her skin, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

His heart did that strange thing again where it skipped a few beats.

She looked conflicted for a long moment before she spoke in a low whisper, barely audible against the hiss of the wind through the trees: “I can’t sleep.”

He traced patterns across the back of her hand with his thumb. “Would you like a story?”

Alina nodded mutely, and he did not know if she knew she was pushing closer to him or not. She adjusted the way her head laid upon her folded arm and watched him as he commenced. “There was a Fabrikator - a Materialki - most probably the best there ever was or will be, if you believe me. He lived in small village with his _otkazat’sya_ wife and two daughters, and he was a man obsessed.

“He had heard tales of amplifiers, things that could transform Grisha. He thought he could do better, and so” - more lines and swirls across the back of Alina’s hand - “he did.

“He created three amplifiers, to be used all together. A stag, a sea whip, and…”

Alina’s whisper was almost breathless. “And what?”

“And he never told anyone the last one.”

Her eyebrows furrowed, a crease forming. Baghra had told them such stories as children, huddled away in their cots. “When you said we were going to hunt a mythical creature…”

“Yes,” Aleksander watched her face change but he could not quite tell what the expression meant. “I wasn’t lying.”    

\---

In the morning they moved on, covered more ground, and Alina held the tracker’s hand instead of his. He offered her a wry smile when she glanced his way.

The winds had seemingly died down but it was still inhumanly cold, and they should not have been able to keep going as long as they did. But perhaps they had not gone as far as Aleksander initially thought because they were still surrounded by jagged rock walls and trees coated in snow, both reaching for the sky. Aleksander had no idea if this was Tsibeya or if they were still within the confines of the Petrazoi. They’d be close to the Fjerdian border if they had reached Tsibeya, would they not?

For all that he had traveled as a child, Aleksander Morozova had no sense of direction.

“We should make camp here,” the tracker said, gesturing at the small clearing they’d stumbled upon. Aleksander couldn't argue that it was likely the best spot they were going to find, but did it grudgingly.

“Set some traps up,” Alina said. “And me and Gavril will get some kindling.”

Mal’s eyes narrowed slightly but he nodded tersely and went about gathering the necessary supplies.

Alina and Aleksander wandered into the trees.

\---

Once more, she found his hand in the dark and squeezed. Then she turned into his body, shoulder to his chest.

“Why not cuddle up to your tracker?” He puzzled aloud.

She gestured with a hand. “He curls up when he sleeps. You sleep on your side; better wind blocker.” A small, wry little smile.

Aleksander nudged her slightly, gave her a meaningful look. “You could just...light it up.”

Alina shook her head. “He doesn’t know.”

“So show him.”

“I can’t.”

“Because he’s an _otkazat’sya_.”

She sighed softly, chewed at her lower lip, avoided Aleksander’s steady gaze. “He thinks Grisha are abominations.”

Aleksander’s lips pulled down at the corners, dark brows furrowing and eyes narrowing to thin slits. “Alina -”

“I’m not in the mood for a lecture,” she snapped, eyes narrowed just the same as his - they stared at each other like this, and _this is the beginning_ some part of him thought.

One side of his mouth quirked.

Not quite a smile, not quite a threat.

**viii.**

A snowstorm kept their movements thoroughly limited the next day. By the time the weak light began to sink below the horizon, they had barely moved at all. It was a terribly unproductive day and Aleksander’s mood was anything but pleasant. The fat flakes of snow falling incessantly from the sky were no help on this front, and neither was Alina’s refusal to summon.

He could hear the tracker’s teeth chattering see Alina’s own lips turning a faint blue and felt the cold slicing through him like he were nothing more than an apparition. He rubbed at his arms, not bare, but they might as well have been for all the good his sleeves were doing him. The temperature only continued to drop along with the snowflakes, and Aleksander’s eyes cut sharply to the girl across from him, nestled in Mal’s arms. “ _Alina_ ,” he gritted the word out between his teeth.

She shook her head in a jerky movement, shaking with an almost violent fervor.

“ _You. Have. To._ ”

“Hey, she doesn’t have to do shit, asshole - !” The tracker spat, clutching at Alina’s arms with fingers turning just as blue as his girlfriend’s lips.

He could not feel his lips this time: “ _Please_ , Alina.”

This was the first time he would beg the Sun Summoner, but, oh,

certainly not the last.

And something in his eyes must have convinced her, or perhaps it was her own conscience telling her she couldn’t handle having blood on her hands (but oh, yes she could), because she shook off the tracker’s grip and got unsteadily to her feet, lips parted and eyes wide. It was a strange thing to have to look up at Alina Starkov.

The boy was speaking, but Aleksander’s attention was absorbed by the line between Alina’s brows as she reached out, reached within, called for the sun. Excitement sparked in his chest. Suddenly he was blind, light so white, so unbelievably, indescribably bright bursting through the mountains, the trees, the sky. And then there was Alina -

 _Alina_.

He couldn’t stand the bright glare of the sun, enveloping her whole ( _nebesnyy_ his mind whispered; _divine thing_ ), but after -

saints was she a sight to behold.

Standing before him, Alina Starkov glowed - _they_ glowed, warm light surrounding them like a living, breathing thing. Exhilaration lined every inch of her face and she stood with her arm outstretched before her.

“Aleks,” her tone was whisper-light, awe-struck. She was looking at him but through him all at once.

“Alina.”

“ _Aleks_ -”

“What the hell was that?” The tracker shouted, suddenly on his feet. His expression seemed to have gotten lost somewhere between confusion and anger, mouth gaping open and brows reaching for his hairline. “What did you _do_ , Alina?!”

The brown-haired girl’s lips curved into a strange little smile and he knew she was not looking at him. He pivoted slowly around to see the white snow painted red, spattered in blood and viscera as she replied, “the Cut.”

Aleksander got to his feet just as slowly as he’d turned. Walked over to see what, exactly, she’d slaughtered so mercilessly. Crouched down to look closer. “Alina,” he almost sing-songed, peering at the white fur, the antlers still somehow intact. Steam curled off the snow with the warmth of the blood and out of Aleksander's mouth with his breath. 

She was beside him, hands clenched into fists, teeth gnawing at her bottom lip and cheeks windburnt. “I - Saints - I...is it what I think it is?”

A grin that was all sharp edges. “The first amplifier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me so long to write, Saints.
> 
> So what did you all think? Personally, I don't feel I made Aleksander live up to his Angsty Potential, but I rather like the way this turned out. Drop me a review and tell me what you thought!


	3. want/merciless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solntse = Sun  
> Saryy = Old  
> (I think that's it??)
> 
> Enjoy!!

* * *

 

She'd always had a sense of humour. Quite apparently, the centuries hadn't beaten that out of her just yet. Some diminutive part of him felt the want to laugh. To crack a smile. Some part of himself wanted to be _proud_. Oh here he went again. More over, he was sure, he wanted to reach up through his ribs and incinerate that soft spot she kept stomping on - maybe he would simply rip out the blood-pumping appendage. Or perhaps he wanted to thrust his hand between her fourth and fifth ribs and - no,

oh no, he just wanted to watch her

beg. 

* * *

 

**ix.**

“You’re - you’re one of them!” The tracker shouted, pointing a finger accusingly, condemningly, at Alina.

Her face was pale, eyes wide, expression caught and terrified as the light disappeared. She was looking at Mal, at the boy she’d smiled brilliantly, adoringly for, at the boy she snuck kisses from and showered in tender affection, like he might kill her.

And Aleksander decided simply, easily, that Mal’s corpse would be cooling in the puddles of melted snow before he could raise a mere hand against Alina.

“Mal -” she choked on the word.

His brows were drawn downwards, mouth open in what almost seemed to be the tracker’s way of baring his teeth. “You are an...abomination! Peop - _things_ like you should all be hunted down and - and -”

Tears ran down Alina’s face in steady streams, and Aleksander thought that for all the pain evident in her face, the way her shoulders shook slightly with every ragged breath she dragged in - she was not even opening her mouth to save herself, let alone putting up a hand to stop the tracker’s torrent of wretched - _worthless_ \- words. And he didn’t understand why. She was more than likely one of the most powerful people in existence and she was not even _trying_ -

Suddenly he understood, watching the tracker spit and curse and condemn and Alina taking it like she was but a servant in a nobleman’s house; love. This merciless thing was love, and it made you weak. He knew it when the tracker raised his hand as if preparing to strike, and the only sign that Alina had registered the movement was her widening eyes and hitching breath.

He didn’t know it when he brought his hands together and blackness erupted. It was like every dark, shadowed part of the forest had coalesced in this miniscule clearing Alina had carved out, blotting out even the faint glow emanating from her.

He heard the tracker yelling, though it was indistinguishable, and -

“ _Aleks_ \- !” It was a petrifying scream, if only for the fact that it was capable of making his heart to shoot up somewhere into his throat and fall down into his stomach at once, capable of sending a wave of pure, unadulterated panic through him.

Had something happened to her? Had  _he_ done something to her, accidentally? Or had the tracker attacked her with something much more deadly, striking out despite the blackness?

“Who the fuck is Aleks?” Demanded Mal.

A hundred thoughts were whirring in his mind, but he managed to reply, to project a sort of calm assuredness into his voice when he spoke: “Light it up, Alina.”

It wouldn’t occur to Aleksander the way the clearing lit up like the sun had come crashing down parodied something in a different clearing, something what seemed decades ago when two children played with sun and shadow like they were inconsequential things.

And it would not occur to Aleksander until much later with a warm glow hanging heavy over them and Alina’s body curved into his against his despite the lack of cold with the sun blanketing them that she had executed flawlessly a maneuver that according to his mother took years to master. She had performed the Cut, and he was surprised to find himself torn between anger (that he hadn’t mastered it first) and adoration (though he did not know it was adoration that made his breath come a little quicker than the moment previous and his jaw tick).

“Next time you think of hurting her,” Aleksander met Mal’s eyes, felt some piece of himself delight with glee at the fear he found there, “it would serve you well to remember there is a reason your people burn us at the stake.”

**x.**

Tension was a new travelling companion that had followed them back through the Petrazoi, to the base of the mountains, through every trail and into every conversation. It limned the tracker like a second skin, more palpable with every day, with every word shared between Alina and Aleksander.

“I’m going to start a fire,” Alina began that evening. “Mal see if you can trap something.” Something close to hatred flashed in the tracker’s eyes momentarily before he spun on his heel, heading for the forest surrounding them.

“I’ll help,” Aleksander nodded his head at the forest in the opposite direction the tracker had disappeared and said, “after you.”

\---

Alina wasn’t saying much. This was not entirely unusual, but she kept walking away from him as if she wished she could leave him in the forest. Fortunately, he was not so easily lost, and - even if she was loathe to admit it - she needed his help reaching the branches on trees (there were very few sticks on the ground, not nearly enough to build a decent fire).

She stared up at a low-hanging branch for a second before she marched forward, seemingly determined, and reached up to grab for it. She missed, nearly toppling forward but catching herself with a hand on the tree’s trunk. Though her back was to him, Aleksander could see her frown, imagine it with perfect clarity in his mind. She tried again, this time trying to find a higher foothold on the trunk (there weren’t any), stretching out her arm as far as it would go. His eyes narrowed on the spot where her dirtied shirt rose up on her back. A noise of frustration passed Alina’s lips and he couldn’t help the chuckle that passed his; he went over to the tree, reaching up behind her to help break off the branch when she spun around to face him, a scowl furrowing her brows and downturning her lips, mouth opening to tell him _I don’t need your help, Aleks_ , when she seemed to notice the same thing he just had: that their faces were very

very

close together.

He hadn’t noticed it when it had happened, but her back was against the tree, and her face had gotten closer. She sucked air in, a sharp noise in the echoing quiet. A small part of Aleksander’s mind flickered to a nameless village, a wooden bench, his hand on her thigh; his heart threw itself, in what felt a violent motion against his ribcage.  

Aleksander’s arms rose on either side of her head - caging her in. His face dipped low enough that she would be able to kiss him with just the slightest movement if she so desired. They had been staring at each other, but...perhaps his attention was better served tracing the lines of her face, her jaw, her throat -  

"Tell me, Alina," Aleksander breathed, eyes now trained on the place where her neck met her shoulder and the dip of her collarbone. He _wanted_ \- wanted more than anything to brush his fingers across the bone, drag them down her sides and -

He felt more than saw her push back against the tree - stomach, hip brushing his. A sharp breath piercing the irregular beats of the appendage in Aleksander’s chest, Alina’s heavy breaths. He wanted that again - _again again again_ (and oh, would he have it); that enthralling feeling of...of... "Has your _otkazat'sya_ claimed you?"

"Claimed me?" She replied in what he thought might have been meant in a dry tone but came out breathless. The blood in her cheeks gratified him in a way something like the way the fear in the tracker’s eyes had.  "Like a peninsula?"

Her eyes fluttered, and fascination fell over him. She was staring at his mouth, her lips parted ever so slightly, and her chin tipped up again, but it wasn't involuntary or in that stubborn manner he was accustomed to. Alina's lips just brushed his, a pressure ever so _slight_ when -

"Alina! Where'd you go?" The voice was panicked, and surprised Aleksander more than he liked.

Her eyes snapped open, that fog that had seemed to come over her dissipating like he’d watched her light do and she pulled back from Aleksander, narrowly avoiding whacking her head against the bark.

Blinking and chest falling heavily, Alina's cheeks turned pink and her expression grave. Her brown eyes were focused on Aleksander's shoulder though he knew she was trying to see over it.

"Alina...?"

This time instead of pulling back she pushed him away, batted his arms away from her head. He let her.

The damage was done already.

Aleksander glanced over at the tracker, lips quirking up just enough to give Mal the impression that he did not regret what the boy had seen: Alina, pressed against a tree, and lips that were not the tracker’s pressed against hers.

\---

It took days to find their way to Balakirev, the tracker proclaiming all the way (and repeatedly, as if if he said it enough times it would evoke some pride from both Aleksander and Alina) that he was going to be rid of them as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Apparently, such an opportunity would not present itself until the tracker had also reached Balakirev.

But the night that they did, the tracker departed with a sneer that spoke the words he kept still in his esophagus: _You’re lucky I don’t slaughter you_.

Aleksander wasn’t inclined to thank him. He had never been the begging type, didn’t think he could beg if he ever tried (but, oh he could he could _he could_ ).

The sky was a paler gray than his eyes overhead, and he felt the promise of rain in the winds; the promise of thunder in the humidity; the assurance of tears from Alina as she walked solemnly alongside him, staring out at the flimsy vendors’ tents packing the streets.  

She still longed for Mal. He could tell. And, steering Alina out of the way of a horse and down an alley between wooden houses that would bring them out quicker to the _staryy_ \- what Aleksander had heard the locals call the part of the bustling business town Baghra lived in when he’d arrived with his mother, many months ago now - he wondered if Alina had known that hateful part of her tracker existed.

It didn’t much matter now, he supposed.

Alina shrugged out from under his hand.

\---

He rapped his knuckles against the rotting wood door. Once. Twice. Nearly a third time in impatience when the door swung inward, open, with a violent force. His mother scowl morphed into something different, not happy, neither pleased. Inquisitive, perhaps.

“Madraya,” he smiled but it was without the tenderness a part of him supposed one should have for their own mother.

She barked a laugh. “What have you come for besides pestering, boy?”

Aleksander’s eyes flicked to Alina for a moment. She was turned away, dark hair knotted on top of her head. He lifted his arm, displaying the antlers, flecked still with the stag’s own blood, fur still clinging desperately to the bottoms. It should have been grotesque, but carrying such a thing for miles on end certainly desensitized one to any stomach-churning qualities.

Then, Baghra’s eyes grew large, and he thought suddenly of shadowy caverns, yawning endlessly before him in his mother’s face. For the first time, he wondered how old his madraya was.

One of her hands went to grip the door. “What have you done, Aleksander?” Her voice was scarcely a whisper but the words hit him in the chest with notable force. Her face shifted, suddenly, and the door was closing rapidly before him and he wasn’t moving to stop it - did not think to try and stop it.

Alina’s hand grabbed the edge of it seemingly in the space between one blink and the next, fingers wrapping around the wood so hard it groaned a quiet, decaying groan. He saw the surprise pass over Baghra’s face momentarily. “You know a Fabrikator.” It was not a question. “Where are they?”

**xi.**

In the story, the stag’s antlers were meant as a collar; to be the head of a triangle to be completed by two cuffs. Though several things flitted across Alina’s face, elation and fear among them, likewise he noted irritation. He could not quite understand why, though he had a guess that perhaps the idea of wearing a collar put on by someone else irked her.

“You will not tell anyone I did this,” the Fabrikator repeated. It had been a requirement.

He moved the antlers on Alina’s neck ever so slightly and something fascinating occurred: the bones fused, melted, merged onto Alina’s skin and stuck. They were, well, bone-white, catching the light in a strange way. Somehow, the collar made her look more like something out of a worship book. _Sankta Sankta Sankta_.

Oh, he had no idea.

**xii.**

As they traveled away from the town, Alina spoke of wanting to see the sea. She told him stories she’d heard at the orphanage of it sparkling like a polished jewel, of the sand like white gold on the shores, the salt in the air. She made him want to taste that air, watch the waves crash against the white-gold shores. And as they spark a fire in the trees, she spoke more. Later, he would not recall about what, only the lulling, captivating cadence of her voice as he lay down with his back to the flames.    

He was tired, unbelievably so, and no matter how much he wanted to force himself awake, to hear more and more and again more of her voice and her tales, he did not. Sleep was something that eluded him more often than not, and Alina would be here when he woke. She would always be here. The thought comforted him in ways not even his Baghra could when he was a child. It was inexplicable, strange, but not unpleasant.

He fell asleep.

**xiii.**

Aleksander Morozova woke to his face pressed against the dirt, an extinguished fire, and alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, but imperative to set up the coming chapters! I loved all the comments & love I got on my last update so, once again, thank you!! 
> 
> Drop me a review and let me know what you thought!! I live for comments!!
> 
> (Also: did I note mention this would be slow burn?? whoopsie muhahaha)


	4. this is how monsters are born

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Monstr = Monster
> 
> Enjoy!!

**xiv.**

“And you’re sure you’ll be able to hold them in line? There won’t be an uprising?” The King gave a chuckle, too heavy, too unnatural. It had been a tedious thing, luring the King into his palm. Building someone’s trust in you was more irksome than he recalled. But the sovereign was old, Aleksander supposed, or getting there by _otkazats’ya_ standards. He had likely been raised on the tail end of mass witch burnings. Gray streaked the man’s hair, and it was a strange thought indeed to have that _I’m never going to look like that_. It had been - well, some time ago when the Black Heretic realized all his acquaintances were aging and he was...not. It was an even stranger thought to have, realizing he was likely going to outlive everyone in this castle by decades, at least. Centuries if he was as powerful as he liked to think.

The Heretic dropped into a quick bow. “I will do my best,Tsar.”

“Very well,” the King sighed with a weary smile. A dismissal. The King did not want to concede, but the options were limited and continuing on this path was, well...people were frightened of witches that burned back, so to speak.

Things were going to change, be better for Grisha as a people and he pretended that his mind did not, in an instant, jump to brown eyes and the cadence of words long forgotten.

\---

He had been working. And he had been working a decent amount of time, he knew, because the sun dripping buttery and light and distracting through the solitary window in his office was drawing him away from the pages he had been pouring over. His eyes burned at the light, dry and tired. He could not recall what time he had started this incessant work, and his tired mind was having a hard time discerning whether the sun was rising or setting.

So truly, it was no remarkable or wonderous thing that he did not hear the soft footfalls behind him, the even softer sounds of breathing - not until there was an arm wrapped around his shoulders and chest, another holding a gleaming blade to his throat, hovering somewhere between his carotid and subclavian arteries.

The Black Heretic hadn’t budgeted any time into his schedule for potential assassination attempts until he unambiguously started making power plays.

Apparently the civilians were more frightened of a new age than he’d perceived.

The stillness of the assassin’s hands made the Heretic think that perhaps this was no regular civilian sly enough to get past his _Oprichniki_ , but a trained killer. Not uncommon, but expensive and he wondered for a brief, hazy moment who had the kind of money to order a hit on him. But the heavy way he spoke, with clipped vowels - that was an unrefined, rural accent from the furthest regions of Ravka.  “Pray, _monstr_. Perhaps the Saints will forgive you yet.”  

“I am no monster,” the Heretic bared his teeth at his reflection in the window, the reflection of the hulking figure behind him. “Not yet.”

\---

Guards charged for the Little Palace. It is the furthest structure on the grounds from the castle, surrounded by woods and hidden away very well for a thing meant to house hundreds.

The screaming begins when they come across the first dead _Oprichniki_.

The screams do not belong to them in that moment.

But they might when darkness begins to pool out of the windows, slowly but surely blotting out the sun dawning on the horizon.  

**xv.**

The girl stared out at the sea. But no, that wasn’t quite right. She was not a girl. She’d long been a woman, but wasn’t it funny that she still felt like a little girl all dressed up in fine fabrics and jewels - well, not jewels. Jewels were for pretty things that couldn’t aim to kill.

She stared out at the sea.

Waves the colour of sapphires lapped at the sands. They were not so gold as she’d once thought, but there was something about digging your feet, your toes into the particles of it. Clouds and boats blew unhurriedly across the endless expanse of sky stretched out at the horizon. _Remember this_ , she told herself. If she didn’t brand it into her mind now, exactly this way, she knew she wouldn’t recall it when, if, she ever returned. Duvaya would be completely changed. It was a certainty; just five years ago, the sea port village had been called Os Volna and a wasteland of rotting wooden structures after the winter frost melted.

Gulls cried softly overhead. Her fingers traced the smooth edge of her collar. The sun ducked its head under the horizon line.   

She got to her feet.

**xvi.**

The next morning some days later Aleksander was woken (and it would be Aleksander and not the Heretic woken because it was far too early and he far too groggy to remember he was supposed to be somebody else) by his _Oprichniki_ knocking on the door to his private chambers, telling him that, _I’m very sorry to wake you, sir, but there’s a woman here to see you and she’s very adamant about -_

The Heretic was brushing past his guard as he said, “thank you, Erich.” He thought it was important to know them all by name, to treat them with the same respect he expected. Especially considering they’d all come running to his rescue so _valiantly_ only days before. Valiantly, stupidly.

“The sitting room, sir!” The guard shouted after him.

He did not notice until he was more than halfway from his chambers and to the sitting room that he was only still in his looser sleeping clothes, covered by a long silk overcoat. Was he so excited about another Grisha finally joining him, and of their own accord instead of the Heretic hunting them like the criminals he was trying to prove they weren’t?

He did not know what to make of the answer he had for himself. It wasn’t particularly pleasing, but he did not hate himself for it.

The Black Heretic drew his overcoat tighter about himself as the guards opened the sitting room doors. He schooled his features to cool, easy neutrality, not unlike the look he often placated the king with, and walked with a confident stride. It did nothing to help him feel differently about the fact that he was going to be meeting the first member of his Second Army with bedhead and in his pajamas.

Whatever confidence and neutrality he’d mustered fell away at the face that turned towards him.

Alina Starkov smiled. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

**xvii.**

He had no idea why she was here, and she’d been here two days. The first time he’d asked, stunned and with a narrow of his eyes, tasting cruelness and bitterness on his tongue, she had simply replied, “You don’t offer your first Grisha soldier a room and some tea after her long and weary days of travel?”

Now, she sat across from him in a fine blue coat that hid the collar he knew she wore with a pair of breeches too big that hung baggy on her legs, tucked into tall boots, wincing as she took a sip of the _kvas_ in her cup. It had been the concept for Grisha uniforms he’d had drafted weeks ago, and he found he rather liked it. He would not allow himself to think that perhaps that was only because Alina Starkov was wearing it.

The Heretic bore his eyes into her, as if he could make her disappear or cower in her seat. Make her less of a bright spot in the room.

“Why are you here, Alina?” He would not let her out of the answer this time.

She put down her cup with an almost reverent gentleness and set the full weight of her attention on him, and he didn’t think he had ever realized before that someone’s attention could hold you in place this way. “I came to see you.”

He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands together and resting them on his midsection. It was a practiced move, made to make him look imposing, if not slightly intimidating. “Is that so?”

She stuck a piece of herring into her mouth, looking all the while like she would much rather not, and then said, “is that bitterness I’m hearing, Aleksander?”

“Black Heretic,” he corrected, jaw working. He didn’t like showing his irritation outwardly, but Alina made it difficult, excruciatingly so, not to. And he was reminded again of the embarrassment he’d felt when he had told her the first time to refer to him as the Black Heretic and she’d laughed herself hoarse. _So dramatic, Aleks_ , the curve of her lips had been indulgent and he’d wanted to break something.

“You can insist on being called that all you want, Aleksander.” The small quirk of her lips told him she was just doing it on purpose now (not that he thought it had been accidental before) - and that she had no intention of stopping.

It was infuriating in a strange way he couldn’t describe.

Especially when he realized she had wriggled away from the question again. And with a _smile_.

“Tell me why you’re really here, Alina. I’m permissive, but to a point.” He gave her a tight-lipped smile, pushing his anger down down down. For some reason he couldn’t fathom at the moment, he didn’t want her to see the viciously cruel man he could become (but oh, he knew nothing of cruelty, not yet). “I’m reaching that point.”

She cocked her head at him. “You think I’m lying?”

The Heretic cut into his own herring slowly, stretching out the seconds. If he could just have a moment to himself, where he did not look at her, did not hear her while she waited for his answer, perhaps this evening would not go so badly after all.

But while the Black Heretic could conduct himself smoothly, easily, without falter like a well-greased machine, Aleksander could not. And he’d had far more practice being Aleksander than the Heretic.

“Why would I not?” He bit out, words clipped.

“I have never lied to you,” she said firmly, chin tipping up as she held his eyes. Her hands were braced on the table, gripping the edge of the wood, and despite himself, he imagined the worst possible thing he could in that moment, for the argument they were on the verge of having. It was a traitorous thought, one he had previously thought his pride would not allow.

Because Alina Starkov had betrayed him, his trust, and here he was shifting in his seat while she stared him down because he’d imagined her bent over the table and himself behind her, his hands on her skin, encircling her throat the same way the antlers did.

Despite himself, the Heretic wondered what sort of noises she would make.

“You are excused,” he told her harshly, pushing away from the table and standing upon stiff legs as if they didn’t quite remember how to work. This was, quite apparently, a conversation he could not have with Alina. Not civilly, at least. Not without imagining doing horrible, wicked things to her.

Not without lapsing back into Aleksander.

And that was something he simply couldn’t afford to do - because Aleksander Morozova did not have the capabilities needed to head an army, to make calculated and not always nice decisions, to torture a man until he was begging to die.

But the Black Heretic did.

**xviii.**

Grisha were slow to come and more than reluctant.

They thought it was a ploy by the crown to round up all the so-called witches and burn the once and for all. At least, based off what his intelligence told him.

So the Black Heretic holed himself up in his study, drafting a legislation he hoped would pass. Because if it did - and it more than likely _would_ ; the king was easier to maneuver than the Heretic thought kings really ought to be - oh, the things it would change for the Grisha, for _him_.

Burnings would be outlawed, illegal; they would have the same basic rights any _otkazats’ya_ did. Grisha would no longer be forced into hiding, no longer murdered and executed.

During the Heretic’s long days and longer nights (for sleep still eluded him, even now, even years later when he needed it to run an army) he rarely if ever laid eyes on Alina. He had his guards watch her, trail her, and report back to him. He did not think she would try to sabotage what he was trying to build, but it never hurt to be prudent; afterall, how many years had passed since he last knew her?

But they only ever reported that she had taken her lunch in her rooms that day, that she had been in the library for many hours another, or that she simply did not leave her rooms at all.

To him, it seemed strange. What did someone who had nothing to do, _do_ in their chambers alone all day long? It could not have been all that important because he always forgot about it by the time he had any spare minute.

And so the Heretic continued to labour, and sometimes he almost forgot that Alina Starkov was even there at all.

\---

Sometimes was a generous word.

\---

He remembered her in the flash of long brown hair out of the corner of his eye; the spill of sunlight through his office window.

He wondered if she had been summoning recently. If so, if she did it in secret or out in the open.

The Heretic made a note to invite her to a private dinner.

**xix.**

The Heretic flipped to the next page of the heavy package. “You’re early.”

Alina shut the door to his private sitting room. “Well, you call and I come. Isn’t that how these things work?”

He flicked his eyes up, a cursory glance. There was no particular expression on her face that told him anything useful, and she wore a silk _kefta_ , a darker blue than the prototype had been. Her pants fit better and her hair was tied away from her face, exposing the top of bone-white antlers. And her face, her face - it was glowing in that way Grisha tended to. But the Heretic thought she wore it differently, perhaps because she was made to glow, the sun at her beck and call.

Perhaps because of something else that the Black Heretic did not feel the need to examine.

“Sit,” he nodded to the chair opposite him.

And she did, but not gracefully. The Heretic shook his head faintly.

“What’s for dinner?” She grinned. “Hopefully not herring?”

Now he folded his hands on the table. “I’m afraid funding a new army leaves little coin for extravagance.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “You consider anything other than herring an extravagance? You’re as bad as an old man.”

“I am not -”

Her grin widened, stretching her face. “No,” she shook her head. “You’re as bad as _Baghra_.”

The Heretic’s brows knit together as he scowled. “I see you’ve not changed, Alina.”

“Aw,” she crooned, pouting her lips. “Is it past the old man’s bedtime?” At his darkening look, she continued, looking nothing less than amused all the while: “You’re really getting up there, aren’t you? We’re about the same age, are we not?”

“And yet you’re acting like a child.”

“So mean, Aleksander,” she chastised, picking up her fork as a servant opened the door with a knock, two trays of food in her arms.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he fought back an exasperated sigh.  

“And I wish you weren’t such a stick in the mud.” She tilted her head, the sunniness suddenly gone from her face. “I suppose neither of us is going to get what we want tonight.”

**xx.**

Slowly the Little Palace became more than an empty husk of the Heretic’s dreams of a better world for the Grisha. Slowly, the classrooms were being utilized and the halls carried the buzz of chatter, and here - here was the future.

Because while the Grisha were wary and afraid after years of conditioning, they were becoming comfortable, if only by a little notch more than the day before.

He worked tirelessly upon the legislation by day, ensuring there were no loopholes any of the royal advisors could use against his wishes (because Saints knew the King was not going to be the one to read it), and by evening was tucked away in his private sitting room having dinner with his sun summoner.

It became a habitual thing, and the Heretic told himself it was just him keeping tabs personally as he tried to wring answers from her mouth. “Tell me Alina,” he looked up at her from beneath his lashes, buttering a piece of crusty bread. “What do you do with yourself all day long, alone in that room of yours?”

“Did your mother not teach you that spying on ladies is a morally corrupt thing to do?”

Oh, she knew very well the things Baghra had taught him.

“My morals have always been corrupt, Alina.”

“That’s a terrible excuse.”

The Heretic regarded her a moment, watched her swallow a spoonful of soup. “So it is.” And he let it go, because she undoubtedly had her secrets, and he had his, and he imagined Alina was just as inclined to part with hers as he was.

**xxi.**

As a show of good faith, the King requested the Black Heretic put on a show at the Winter Fete. ( _It is the least you can do, Heretic._ ) To show the people that the Grisha were nothing for them to fear. The Heretic did not exactly agree with this, but nodded and bowed all the same, and began the preparations that afternoon.

Some Tidemakers would open the show, closely followed by two Squallers and then three Inferni, whose performance in the dark would lead up to the grand finale - him.

“But somehow you don’t think there’s going to be a problem with it being only you, and your shadows?” Alina arched a brow at him, pointing her fork as she spoke.

“No,” the Heretic leaned back in his seat, studying her eyes. “Do  _you_ think there’s going to be a problem, Alina?”

She made an expression of mock-contemplation, tipping her head back just a little in the act. “Oh, gee I don’t know. Maybe the fact that everyone you’ve ever met is scared shitless by your shadows?” She shook her head. “I mean seriously, they always think it’s like imminent death or something.”

He opened his mouth to respond when she added, “and the whole thunder-clapping thing” - she clapped her hands together, gave him a pointed look - “does _not_ help.”

“What would you suggest?” His eyes were narrowed, in warning or threat or curiosity, the Heretic himself wasn’t quite sure.

“Well for one, don’t look at me like you want to slit my throat - or anyone else’s, for that matter - and second, use me.”

His eyes widened. _Use me_ \- “I beg your pardon?”

Alina’s eyes searched his face. “Use me,” she repeated. “In the show.”

“How?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

She rolled her eyes, giving him a look like he was particularly stupid this evening (and oh, how Aleksander had missed that look). “Don’t tell me you haven’t read enough poetry to not know about the _utter_ poeticness of light and dark. The sun and the moon?” She suggested at his bland look.

“I’ve read plenty, Alina,” the Heretic took a drink from his cup, “I just can’t say I find using such a tactic exceptionally tasteful.”

“Tasteful!” She barked a laugh, coming forward in her seat with the motion. He watched with rapt fascination the way her smile crinkled her cheeks, her eyes, and was surprised to find that, even in this dimly lit room of his, amongst the dark colour scheme and such, that she still radiated sun. “That’s awfully rich, Aleksander, coming from a man who used his powers to blind his opponent and then took out his eyes and innards. Not to mention cutting him apart like that - which, really, was just overkill at that point. But if you like mutilating corpses, to each their own -”  

It was his turn to laugh. “Opponent, you say, like the man was not trying to kill me _first_.”

“And you say that like he was much of an opponent at all.” Alina’s hands were braced on the table again and there was a challenge in her face, the stubborn set of her jaw and the slight narrow to her brown eyes. The sight was equally enthralling and exhilarating.

“Fine, then,” the Black Heretic pushed out of his chair. “I’ll see to it you have the appropriate garments for the Fete, and you will see to it that you meet me for practice tomorrow morning. Outside.”

Alina rest her head on her hand, giving him a half displeased look as he reached for the knob. “Practice? Like we haven’t been doing this since we were eight years old?”

“Dawn, Alina,” the Heretic said as he closed the door behind him.

\---

Dawn came and went, and there was not quite a word for how much of a fool the Heretic felt like, having stood solitary on the outskirts of the palace grounds with his guards.

There was also not exactly a word to describe the mixture of embarrassment and rage that propelled him up and up the Little Palace’s many flights of stairs. His _Oprichniki_ hurried behind him, their breaths audible with every inhale and exhale. Alina’s room was on the highest floor in the west wing, the only person occupying a suite this high up - he’d been sure to see to that. There was no need for her to get acquainted with the other Grisha, with the students and let something slip about him.

So he felt no reservations about harshly telling his guards to go back downstairs and attend to the students and then proceeding to bang on the door until it swung open.

And however angry he was, had been, it fell a little short in the face of Alina Starkov wiping sleep from her eyes and glaring up at him, feet bare and dressed in a white slip. One of the straps was sliding down her shoulder.

“Can I _help_ you?” Her voice was hoarse, and oh oh _oh_ , did his mind jump to all the different ways he could do that to her.

He gave her a tight smile that did not reach his eyes, craning his head so he could look down his nose at her. “No, but perhaps I can help _you_ , Alina dear.” Her face shifted to look something closer to malignant. He pointed to the window across the room behind her. “Do you see that?” She did not move. “The sun has already risen, and I’m sure you know what that means.”

“That you’re cranky?” She bit out.

The Heretic leaned in closer, close enough to smell the perfume of her skin, feel the tickle of her breaths against his face. “That you missed practice.”

Alina’s head fell back as she laughed. It was not an amused laugh. “Get over yourself, Aleksander.”

The Black Heretic was typically very good at choosing his words, at stringing them together in just the right way to get what he wanted, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted - her to feel guilty? To fear him?

But none of that precise carefulness with which he usually used his words mattered, nor did what he wanted, because it all went out the window. Perhaps he was so used to speaking his mind around her, or perhaps she was just very very good at getting under his skin, but - “Get over myself? _You_ came to _me_ , may I remind you - demanding a room, no less. Now I don’t know about you, dear, but if I were you I would be a lot kinder to me, especially after that trick you pulled the last time I saw you.”

Her eyebrows shot up, but the Heretic thought there was still something threatening about her expression. Oh, he knew what she was capable of, but the question was whether or not she would actually _do it_. “Of course I came to you!” She shouted, lifting her arms up and dropping them back to her sides. “Someone tried to assassinate you! And -” her voice broke, and something in the Heretic’s mind shifted, shuttered, changed just the most infinitesimal amount. Maybe this was not just Alina trying to be cruel to him, and his mind ran rampant with _what if what if what if_.

She continued on despite - or likely because she had not noticed - his faintly perplexed expression as he watched her. “You’re - you’ve - if you…” she took in a breath, then another, her eyes shining as she looked away, resting her chin on her shoulder. “I don’t know what I would do if you died.”

The Black Heretic was not known for his forgiveness, this man who tortured and mutilated his enemies, manipulated and schemed - so was it not funny when he grabbed Alina’s hands, lacing their fingers together between them, one by one, until their palms were pressed firmly together and he could feel the line of Alina’s scar, feel the power thrumming through her veins, another heartbeat of hers.

 _Wanting makes you weak_ one part of his mind crooned. _Then I am weak_ , Aleksander thought, and squeezed harder.

**xxii.**

“Heretic,” the King clapped him on the shoulder. A jovial action, a cup in the man’s other hand, sloshing liquid over the sides as the King beamed. “I trust all is in order for tonight’s performance?”

The Heretic smield a close-lipped smile. “Of course, Moi Tsar.”

“Fantastic!” The king laughed and called for another round of drinks. Cheers erupted from the crowd of nobles.

The Black Heretic searched the crowd; he spotted many of his Grisha - they were required to attend, to show good faith and loyalty to the Tsar - all easily visible in their vibrant _keftas_ , but not the one he was looking for. He would know Alina when he saw her, the Heretic was sure of it.

She would, after all, be the only other Fete attendee wearing his colours.

But when candles began to blow out and people looked around, nervous, confused, as the room dimmed, his two best Squallers drawing the room’s attention over to the stage, he had yet to spy Alina in amongst the throng.

Irritation sparked, along with something else he refused to acknowledge.

Eventually he decided to head over to the stage and wait, satisfaction lighting his eyes as the crowd parted before and around him. They were afraid, and while this was something he expected, desired, he did not expect the curiosity that twined itself with that fear. He imagined it was something like being told a snake was venomous but still leaning in for a better look. Valiant. Stupid.

The palace ballroom was all gold and tall pillars, carvings grappling up the domed ceiling to a mural beginning to fade with age, light refracting off grand chandeliers decorated with cherubs. Tapestries in dark shades of red, blue, green and yellow depicted scenes both legendary and bloody. Sankt Ilya with his stag, seawhip and firebird hung next to the Battle for Sikurzoi.

“Interesting tapestries to hang next to each other,” Alina’s voice came from behind him, and he fought the urge to whirl around, instead only turning his head with a particular slowness.

He nearly had to do a double-take.

“Alina,” his tone was measured, carefully void of inflection. “Was there something wrong with the black one?”

But of course he knew - and he _should_ have known. It was very Alina of her to wear the blue _kefta_ in place of the exquisite one he had had the royal tailors craft. The cuffs and collar were embroidered in gold, the rest of it so dark he thought she might have been able to pass for one of his shadows.

“I may not be slowly climbing my way up Ravka’s political ladder, but clothing sends a very strong message, Heretic,” and it was the way she bit out his name, the one he’d taken for himself, that sent a thrill through him. Anger. Desire. Really, it was one and the same. “And I,” she continued, taking a step closer to him and her face suddenly seemed much sharper than before, the angles of it deadly in a strange way. “Am not about to write your name all over myself.”

In answer, he gave her a contemptuous little smile. “We have a show to perform.”

\---

The Black Heretic stepped out onto the stage. The slightly raucous applause of those drunk or getting there reached his ears, punctuated with conversation. The crowd had been all smiles for his Squallers, his Tidemakers and Inferni. Now, they were hesitant.

Perhaps they were right to be - but he was pleased.

He brought his hands together, the sound an unexpected boom of thunder that silenced the buzzing room. Men and women alike glanced uncertainly to the person next to them. Unsure, unsettled, on edge.

The screams only started when darkness flooded the room, worse than a starless, moonless night in the heart of Ravka’s woods. It was an inky blackness that made everything disappear, dissolve before your very eyes. The Heretic imagined the people in the crowd to be lucky if they could see even the skin of their hands in front of their eyes.

Naturally, though, seeing their hands was not amongst their top priorities right now.

The shrieks and wails, shouts and curses began reaching a fever pitch when the Heretic caught a first glimpse of light streaking through his shadows. It was just a tiny thing, a sliver of what he knew Alina to be capable of.

The light began to grow, to bleed through the darkness like some divine thing, spreading out in random curls and swirls, seeming to reach for the furthest, darkest corners of the room. Light glinted and refracted off the crystal of the chandeliers once more, and the Black Heretic caught glimpses of the crowd’s faces. Half horrified, half mystified, half reverent.

He felt more than saw the sunlight circle around him, making him glow like some sort of holy relic, a Saint come to life.

He almost laughed.

It felt like he was living in the space between seconds, between one breath and the next. There was nothing here but him, and Alina, carving shapes into the darkness, the brightness of the sun glinting off her fingertips, glaringly bright and yet - you could not look away, would not.

There was no screaming, not anymore, and abruptly, the room was bathed in buttery sunshine. The shadows and darkness dissolved, melted away. He could see Alina now, and had his heart been beating this hard before? The light seemed to come from within her, her face and exposed skin glowing with a radiance he could not remember ever seeing on her face before.

Not even after she’d used the Cut to bring down Morozova’s stag.

The room burst into applause and loud cheers. Alina met his eyes across the stage as he brought a hand up, idly working a shape into the air, leaving empty spaces for her light to bleed through and onto the nobles.

She looked more than amused as she regarded the shape he’d made of their intertwined powers.

A sun in eclipse.

\---

The night proceeded, drinks flowing freely and people dancing and laughing wildly. The room had become increasingly warm, more so if you danced, and Alina couldn’t remember where, but she had taken off her _kefta_ some time ago.

Her skin felt flushed, her cheeks sore with the feeling that came with smiling in abundance.

It was a wonderful way to feel.

From across the room, a pair of gray eyes attempted to pin her in place and she shrugged them off. Aleksander could dig his claws into her another time.

Right now, she had a lifetime of dancing to make up for.

\----

“You seemed to enjoy yourself.” It was not a question, and Alina’s head snapped up at the words.

Her eyes seemed nearly black in the darkness of the Little Palace’s main hall. Many of the Grisha were still at the party, performing parlour tricks for all too eager nobles. “No more than you, I’m sure,” her tone was dry and one of her hands went to rest on a hip as she spoke.

Her _kefta_ was draped loosely over her shoulders, her hair that had been pulled up in some elaborate style was just as loose, and as she reached up to tug on the sparkling pins, it occurred to him again just how much he wanted Alina Starkov.

The feeling was not new or unfamiliar in any way except for the finality, the decidedness of it.

He wanted the Sun and he would be damned if he would not _have her_.

Silently, the Heretic reached up to help her with the rest of her pins, plucking them out with an ease that made her huff out a breath. “Thanks,” she said and they stood there a moment before he reached up to the clasp on the top of his dark _kefta_ , forcing his fingers to stumble over a task long recorded to memory. He pulled at it and then let out a breath of irritation. Some part of him couldn’t believe he was doing this.

“Alina,” he pitched his voice low in the darkness of the hall, being sure to meet her eyes as he went on. “Would you help me with this clasp?”

It made her step closer, to be able to reach up to it. Her knuckles just brushed the skin of his throat, and he listened closely to the sound of her soft inhales and exhalations. It should have shocked him how much she still looked the same, even after so many years, but then, if it did he thought perhaps that was just a tad hypocritical.

The clasp came apart easily between her fingers, but she stayed put. She did not retreat to the stairs, and _I have you exactly where I want you_.

Her collarbone was peeking out from under the silk of her _kefta_ , and he dragged a finger across the skin there. She let him. And she let him trail that finger up the side of her throat, over her cheekbone until his hand rest on the side of her face, lightly cupping it.

“You are terrible,” she declared and, with her fingers clutching at the fabric still hanging over his shoulders, pulled his mouth down to hers.

It was not a gentle kiss, it was both of them pushing and pushing and neither giving. “I am,” he agreed. Later, he would not recall very well the process of the getting from them Little Palace’s main hall to his private chambers, except for a lot of Alina’s back against the walls and her teeth at his throat.

The Heretic kicked his chamber door shut, and Alina pulled harder at his hair. A soft groan escaped his lips and he began walking them towards the doors at the other end of the room. Though he would have gladly splayed Alina out on his table or settee, he knew from experience a bed was much preferable.

A thought poked through the haze clouding his mind and he found himself wondering if Alina was a virgin. But the way she moved her hips against him...it was likely highly improbable.

Her deft hands pushed away his _kefta_ , and neither of them paid it any attention as hers followed it, falling to the floor in two heaps. Alina pulled her shirt up over her head, and they were almost to his bedchamber doors when her hands slid up under his, brushing the skin of his abdomen, his hips, the waistband of his pants. The Heretic sucked in a sharp breath, his fingers tightening, digging into her waist, her shoulder. He wanted to touch her everywhere at once, an impossible urge to taste every inch of flesh. There was too much of her and not enough time and he wanted this to go faster and he wanted to drag it out until she was begging -

 _he wanted, he wanted, he wanted_.

The Heretic pressed his lips to the juncture where her throat and shoulder met, sucking and biting and a soft noise fell from her mouth. Suddenly Alina was pressed between him and the double doors, leg hooked on his waist.

“Would you like to take this to the bedroom, Alina dear?” He breathed against her jaw, voice hoarse and low-pitched. This time, however, the effect was unintentionally.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” she snapped out and a chuckle passed his lips.

Alina’s leg fell from his waist and the Heretic opened one of the doors, ushering her in ahead of him. She did not stop to take in his room, watching him intensely instead. Her hair was mussed from his hands, from being pressed against various surfaces, and her cheeks were red, perhaps redder than he had ever had the pleasure of seeing them.

Somehow she was still the most radiant thing he could remember seeing.

She cocked her head at him, chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. “Are you planning on staring at me all night or are you going to take me to bed?”   

“I think I can manage both,” the Heretic replied frankly with a pointed raise of his dark brows.

“Then please,” Alina raised an arm, dropping it back to her side. “Get on with it.”

“So demanding,” his shirt fell to the floor and he advanced on Alina, her hands rising to grip his shoulders as the Heretic backed her up to the four poster bed.

“Such an asshole,” Alina gritted out.

“Of all the words you could have used, Alina. I expect -” she mashed her mouth against his, tugging him down onto the bed with her.

\---

“Say my name,” the words were a plea, voice steeped in desperation as she writhed beneath him.

Her nails dug into the skin of his back, his shoulder blades. “Aleksander,” she gasped. “Aleks, Aleks, Aleks, _Aleks_.”

\---

No moonlight slipped in through the window, the room dark, pillows and clothes scattered on the floor, blankets a tangled mess on the bed. Alina stared up at the ceiling, like she couldn’t believe exactly what had occurred. Of all places she had thought of ending up after Keramzin, after Duvaya, in Aleksander Morozova’s bed had not been one of them. One of his arms was under her head, and it was comforting sound, the sound of his chest rising and falling.

Alina Starkov stared up at the ceiling.

And Aleksander stared with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, this was a damn long one. I actually intended to end it later on, but it was just getting so long and I'm really tired. It's almost 1 a.m.
> 
> What did you think of Alina and the Black Heretic (okay, Aleks)? What did you think about their relationship? Well, I hope you savoured and enjoyed it because it's all about to go to shit.
> 
> Sorry.
> 
> Also, apologies for any errors you may have noticed. As above stated, I am dead tired y'all.


	5. whatever it takes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solntse = Sun

**xxiii.**

Papers drifted slowly to the floor in all directions, and the Black Heretic stood, feet braced apart, palms flat and teeth clenched at his desk. A low, throaty noise worked its way out of him, and only after he couldn’t stop, he realized he was laughing. Laughing so much he had no air, so hard his stomach hurt.

Of course!

Of course Fjerda and Shu Han, two countries feuding for years, would ally themselves to annihilate Ravka.

Of course his soldiers would be sloppy, unprepared, and unorganized. _Of course of course of course!_

They were but children. Children, who barely knew how to use their powers for anything but impressing nobles.

Useless.

He needed a plan - one so clever, so brilliant, so cunning Fjerda and Shu Han would weep at his feet for mercy.

The Heretic picked up his papers, stacked them into various neat piles on the wooden desk, and picked up a quill.

\---

“You missed dinner,” Alina accused, leaning a hip against the doorway to his office.

He barely flicked his eyes up, mulling through what felt a thousand possibilities in his mind. “I’m occupied, Alina. Did you need something?”

If he noticed the hurt that flashed across her face, he didn’t make it known. “In a mood, I see,” she crossed her arms over her chest, kefta rippling with the motion. When there was no reply, she smiled caustically. “Well, now I can see that you’re _perfectly_ alive and intact, I’ll be going.”

Alina turned on her heel and marched back out the door she’d come, his Oprichniki closing it behind her. Something like guilt swirled oily and slick in him, a mild discomfort - one he filed away for later.

There were bigger things to worry about than Alina’s misplaced _concern_.

\---

Sometime in the night, when the Black Heretic was half mad with frustration, he received word from a panicked guard of the King’s.

Fjerda and Shu Han had attacked Duvaya. They had killed and maimed villagers, set their houses on fire and danced on the ashes.

Anger burst through him, replacing the blood in his veins, sharpening the thoughts in his head until one became very clear: he did not need a plan.

He needed a weapon.

**xxiv.**

The type of weapon the Black Heretic desired was not only hard to come by.

It was nonexistent (but, oh, not yet).

There was nothing in creation that could create the mass amounts of destruction, of pain and suffering he wanted to inflict (but, oh, there would be).

So he hunched over his desk, by daylight and candlelight, pouring over the ideas that came to him and seething over the ideas that did not.

And when he wasn’t tied up in his study, he was overseeing Grisha training, even training them himself. What he wanted was an army that already knew what they were doing, an elite force to reckoned with.

But even Aleksander had been resourceful, and so the Heretic could be even more so, and work with what he had.

\---

The Heretic dreamed about his weapon, the possibilities. There were great canons, an impossible blackness, and then Alina, the wind blowing back her hair, a fierce expression upon her face, using the Cut alongside him.

In this dream, and only this one, Ravka's enemies cowered.

**xxv.**

The King lounged back in a gold chair. His crown looked as though it had been tarred to his wide head, and his expression was unconcerned.

“As I’m sure you’ve heard, _Moi Tsar_ ,” the Heretic began, “we are being trapped from all sides by Fjerda and Shu Han.”

The King waved a hand, sipping from a gold goblet with the other. “It is not so bad, Heretic, I assure you.”

The Black Heretic leaned forward on the table, palms flat against the wood. “And I am assuring you that it is.”

“Now you listen here, boy -”

“We have Fjerda at the south, slaughtering border villages; Shu Han to the north, doing just the same - meanwhile their fleets are reigning down an unprecedented level of destruction to Duvaya and Novokribirsk. They will reach Kribirsk in a matter of _days_.” The Heretic took his seat at the opposite end of the table, eyes challenging, folding his hands across his midsection. “Now tell me, _Moi Tsar_ , how soon can you have the First Army ready to be deployed?”

\---

The Heretic was disgusted - by the King’s blatant ignorance to the fact that his country was beyond the tipping point of being at war, by the way he had nonchalantly dismissed the Heretic’s words and request for First Army troops because _They’re getting new breastplates, boy, and they cannot fight without the Lantsov crest_.

His expression shuttered at the knock at his office door. He called for whoever it was to come in - it was about the right time for a servant to bring him a dinner tray - and perched behind his desk, staring at the messy, half-completed plans that made no sense whatsoever. What had he been _thinking_?

There was no time to construct some elaborate plan, some great weapon of mass destruction. Fjerda and Shu Han were doing it with guns and fire and manpower.

He had something much better at his disposal.

He jerked at the sound of the dinner tray dropping down onto his desk, the metal of it clanging against the lid. His head shot up, taking in the scene before him, assessing. His lips curled into something akin to a snarl at Alina, glaring down at him.

Her hair was curled prettily and he wanted to shout at her - something about wasting time when they should be preparing for war - but she rested her palms flat against his desk, splaying papers, and leaned forward, towards him.

“Can I help you, Alina?” Each word was spoken slowly, through gritted teeth.

“As a matter of fact,” she smiled, but it wasn’t kind, and it did not reach her eyes, “you can.”

“Get on with it,” he flicked his eyes back down to the pages at hand, dismissive.

“You are running yourself ragged, Ale -”

“What is the difference to you?” He asked almost harshly, curtly, not glancing up, taking a quill to one of the designs he’d drawn up days before. The urge to cross it out, to slash the ink-dipped tip of the quill across it until he could not see it or until the page was as black as his shadows was there, but there was no need for him to demonstrate such a thing in front of Alina.

“The difference to me is that I refuse to stand by and watch it happen.”

The Heretic sat back and gazed up to meet Alina’s eyes. “You are under no obligation to stay here, Alina. You know my policy.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You have no experience in a war, let alone in strategizing for one,” her voice was low and all sharp edges. He wasn’t sure if she’d meant to insult him or not.

“And how would you know? I have  _you_ , Alina. Right in the palm of my hand. I can have Fjerda and Shu Han, just as well.”

“You do not have me, Aleksander,” she bit out, fingers curling in, crumpling the papers beneath her hands. “You have nothing. The Grisha only follow you because they are scared of everything else, and I suppose somehow _you_ are the lesser of two evils.” She laughed; a mirthless sound that he delighted in all the same. “You play at power, at being a leader. But all you truly want it is revenge.”

“Revenge?” It was only fitting that it be his turn to laugh that dry, hollow laugh. “What good is revenge to me?”

“We both know you’re no philanthropist, so what else is there for you?”

The Heretic continued to stare up at her, his expression carefully calm

then, a half smile graced his features, the turn of his lips cold.

\---

The Heretic hovered at the edges of the dining hall two mornings later, nothing more a shadow in dark robes, observing. One of his Oprichniki approached him, and the Heretic asked, voice unheard by anyone else over the din of the students, “Where is Alina Starkov?”

“Gone, sir,” the man replied.

**xxvi.**

“Apologies, sir,” a royal guard stood impatiently, all but bouncing on his heels in the doorway, a letter in hand. “Urgent message from the King.”

The Heretic took the folded paper and thanked the guard. He broke the wax seal, still warm, and skimmed his eyes over the letter.

_Gather your army, Heretic. You march to Kribirsk tonight._

\---

The First and Second Armies gathered at dusk outside the palace gates. The Heretic sat astride a black horse, waiting for all the men and Grisha to mount their horses.

They would follow the Vy, and supposing they did not stop or slow, they would arrive in Kribirsk by morning.

The Heretic kicked his horse into motion a few minutes later, and the First and Second Armies were off to war.

\---

By sunrise, they were so close to Kribirsk that he could hear the gunfire, the shouts and cries. His legs had begun to ache, and his back was stiff and sore, and he had no doubt the same applied to the Royal General and the two armies behind them. 

He brought them to a halt, the General beside him. They exchanged a glance and swung down from their horses, leading their armies forward. The Grisha were quite noticeably nervous, and the  _otkazat’sya_ soldiers hadn’t stopped grumbling about fighting with witches even as they rode. 

They crept closer, and slowly soldiers began to draw their weapons; knives and daggers, guns and swords. It had been an affair of _grab what you can_ as they'd rushed to make preparations for their hasty travels to Kribirsk. Suddenly, a bright flash of buttery and warm light left them all stunned and still for a moment; the Heretic blinked rapidly, trying to regain his sight. He knew what that had been (or rather who) - knew it deep in his bones, and marched the Second Army forward, the Royal General and First Army lagging behind.

The cries grew in volume and frequency, most of them pained and weeping and of a foreign language. The battlegrounds loomed, now clearly visible, a flat plain of dead grass and ruined houses and buildings and ash from what the Shu and Fjerdans had already burned.

It appeared they were now visible as well because the First Army drew their guns and the Grisha summoned their abilities as bullets headed for them and enemies charged at them.  

But there - seemingly at the center of it all stood the Sun Summoner, almost as though she were the sun around which the battle gravitated. She held her arm out in front of her, a wide beam of light slicing through the assailants who tried to get near her. Bullets flew at her from all directions, and she tried her best to deflect them, but -

One caught her, in her upper thigh, and the Black Heretic hadn’t even realized he was running, the Second Army hot on his heels; Infernis setting fire to Fjerdans and Shu, Materialki destroying their weapons, Heartrenders bringing men to their knees, already dead before they hit the ground.

Alina buckled, the bright sunlight vanishing and their enemies gained ground. He brought his arm forward, slowing to a walk so he could concentrate and -

There it was.

His shadows, manifesting into a deadly weapon that began cutting down Fjerdans and Shu like they were nothing more than stalks of wheat. Alina glanced back at him with suddenness, surprise lighting her face, then - 

it twisted into something else. 

Something like gratitude. 

She’d thought she was going to die.

An unprecedented sort of anger took root in him, and bullets pelted them from left to right, and though Alina was doing a remarkable job of slicing people in half considering her wounds, there was too many of them.

Too many Grisha and _otkazat’sya_ dead already, too many Fjerdans, too many Shu. Too many bullets.

It was a funny thing, to know you were about to die he thought, watching a Fjerdan marksman take aim at him and effortlessly pull the trigger. But then, there were blue robes billowing out and brown hair flying, almost in slow motion, and then there was Alina, laying on the ground, amid cries to kill and to capture the witches and the sound of gunfire.  

Fury rocked Aleksander. He would make them plead for mercy, make them wish they had taken better shots when they’d had the opportunity.

Because he would not be merciful. 

No, not at all.

He brought his hands together, the sound thunderous in his ears, and watched blackness erupt, watched men fall victim to fear at what was about to befall them. 

It would be only the first of many horrors he would be sure to inflict upon them.

The world was falling apart and reforming before his eyes; the terror he glimpsed before total blackness eclipsed everything, the feeling of nothingness - absolute nothingness, not even air, around him. He felt like he was suffocating.

Suffocating on his own powers.

He knew why she’d done it - jumped in front of a bullet, only to be hit by a rain of them, the  _valiant_ woman - and he hated her for it. Well and truly. But he pulled her into his lap, all the same, cradled her head in his harsh hands, because he might have just done the same if things had been reversed.

Eternity was a heavy burden to bear alone.

Her robes were nearly black with all the blood, and what a cruel way for fate to have her wearing his colours. She was growing increasingly pale in his arms, and there was nothing he could do for her as it spread and soaked the rest of her, as she began to become engulfed in the void of shadowy blackness all around them like a great cocoon.

The Black Heretic had been rendered as useless as Aleksander had always been, it seemed.

So he did what Aleksander might have done - for he did not know Aleksander, not anymore - and screamed. He screamed, screamed for help, and screamed some more, until his throat was raw. Some of the screams were promises of death, of mercilessness. But he did not know, did not care to remember, and revenge was the second thing on his mind.

The first was Alina, and he cursed at her as she smiled up at him, teeth bloody: “Don’t you dare! You will not, Alina! You will not!” He gritted his teeth, enraged, and he did not think he had ever known fury like this - did not think he would ever feel such fury again, but what did he yet know? - because he could command legions, armies, could make _anyone_ obey him, but he could not make Alina Starkov.

He could not make Death.

And so he became desperate, a boy in the woods with his _Solntse_ , only this time he _knew_ she was going to leave him. “ _Look at me, Alina!_ Look _at me!_ ”

Her grin spread, that awful bloody smile, and it dribbled down her chin, came out of her nose, and he could barely see her anymore. Maybe his shadows would suffocate her before the bullet wounds killed her.

She weakly lifted a hand, barely up above where it had lain on the ground, and she watched the sunlight twist between her fingers, weaving itself around her as if it, too, would not let her go.

But then, neither of them had much of a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! That was a long time coming!
> 
> So is everyone mad at me??? I can already see it.
> 
> Drop me a comment and let me know what you thought!! :))

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, hear me out - I know this was rough. The next chapter is gonna be better, though (hint hint: teenage Aleks). 
> 
> Drop me a review and tell me what you thought!


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